When the scathing reviews started pouring in and the dismissive derision began piling up, I knew I would like Dark Shadows. I have an Armond White sized penchant for contrary outrage with the critical consensus, especially when it concerns one of my favorite film makers. Obviously I can admit that Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was unnecessary at best, Alice in Wonderland was soulless garbage and Planet of the Apes, well, I don't even want to speak about that. But everything else in the Burton oeuvre is magical to me, in particular his more spooky collaborations with Depp. Sleepy Hollow, Ed Wood and Sweeney Todd have everything I love about film coursing through their veins. I'm not the least bit familiar with Dark Shadows apart from having heard of it my whole life and being tangentially aware of the Barnabas Collins character portrayed by the late Jonathan Frid. So keep all this in mind as I dispense with the qualifiers and lay this on the table.
Dark Shadows absolutely captivated me. Its first hour is vintage Burton, which is to say, absolute perfection. Unparalleled production design and costuming. A quirky Elfman score with some refreshing tricks up its billowy sleeve. A game cast with Pfeiffer and Depp playing off each other beautifully. Depp is astonishingly great as Barnabas. Sure, he likes to dress up in funny outfits, wear pancake makeup and talk in goofy voices, but never once did I question the integrity of his performance in this film. Such total commitment in this fantastical a milieu is as rare as it is welcome and pays off immensely in regard to believably building the world of the film. He gets to be charming, hilarious and convincingly murderous, sometimes in the course of a single scene. His fish out of water schtick is a riot, never more so than in his first five minutes out of the grave. The opening prologue leading up to his accursed imprisonment is some of the strongest material I've seen from Burton since Sleepy Hollow, visually reminiscent of the splendid "By the sea" section of Sweeney Todd.
By the time Knights in White Satin began playing over breathtaking shots of a train gliding through gargantuan woodlands, I was wholly enchanted and utterly swept away by Burton's latest moody masterpiece. The film is at its best when it hews closest to the soap opera template of two characters speaking dramatically in ornate rooms. The first scene with Pfeiffer and Depp is simply mesmerizing. I could have watched these two interact in various rooms of the lavish estate for the majority of the run time and been satisfied. I've never felt passionately one way or the other toward Michelle Pfeiffer, but I absolutely adore her in this, her steely beauty perfectly contrasting Depp's ghoulish elegance. More and more characters are introduced to varying degrees of import or success, Haley's exhausted groundskeeper and Carter's boozy psychiatrist the only ones making much of an impression.
Which brings me to the films only real drawback. Having been adapted from a long running television drama, the story becomes scattershot. Characters and subplots are given increasingly short shrift, rendering the second half narrative thrust a diffuse mess. Perhaps the film is best viewed as little vignettes meant to give us a taste of the epic, overarching story. Unfortunately, tantalizing snippets of a world, no matter how darkly sumptuous, do not a cohesive movie make. It all culminates in a relatively shark jumping wrap-it-all-up battle that brings to mind Death Becomes Her and most regrettably, the lifeless Del Toro Wolfman remake. The calamitous effect this rushed denouement has on the story aside, I will admit the effects are top notch and it is somewhat exciting. The hoary old "house coming alive" bit is inspired and a marvel of sound design at the very least.
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